I first started studying Greek at St. Stephen's School in Rome in 1983. I was the only person to have signed up for the class, and my first year of Greek was taught as a personal tutorial. My text book was Clyde Pharr's Homeric Greek.

In 1991, I encountered a Greek New Testament in a bookstore, and that impulse purchase (so I could restart my Greek) started a chain of events that led me to B-Greek in 1994, to attending annual meetings of the SBL starting in 1998, to writing my first scholarly article for New Testament Studies in 2001, to publishing my book on Secret Mark in 2005, and, ultimately, to enrolling Duke University's premier New Testament program in 2007.

Now, I am a Greek Instructor in the Duke Divinity School. I just finished teaching my first year of Greek, and this summer (2011) I am leading a Greek reading group.

In those early days, B-Greek in general and certain participants in particular (esp. Carl Conrad, Edward Hobbs, and Carleton Winbery) were absolutely formative for me in (re)learning the language. I hope that whatever form it takes now can be as beneficial to interested amateurs as it had been for me in the 1990s.